Ring of Fire
Authors: Pierdomenico Baccalario
This book is for my grandmother,
who sees the stars from very close up
.
1.
The Trap
2.
The Dust
3.
The Four
5.
The Call
10.
The Café
11.
The Library
12.
The Journal
13.
The News
16.
The Floor
17.
The Bed
19.
The Map
20.
The District
21.
The Streets
22.
The Basement
23.
The River
24.
The Letters
26.
The Water
27.
The Stone
28.
The Ring
29.
The Betrayal
31.
The New Year
32.
The Stars
I know that I am mortal.
But when I explore the winding circles of the stars,
my feet no longer rest on earth, but, standing beside Zeus,
I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods
.
—Ptolemy, astronomer
Nature loves to hide
.
—Heraclitus, philosopher called the Dark One
T
HE STARS OF
U
RSA
M
AJOR ARE PERFECTLY STILL IN THE SKY
.
The time has come for them as well
.
Inside the shelter surrounded by ice is the sound of fingers drumming nervously on the table. Then a question, which hangs at length in the smoke-filled air
.
“Do you think she’ll come?”
There’s no reply. The aluminum windows are bitter cold. It’s snowing outside. The glacier gleams with a bluish glow
.
“I think I hear wolves …,” one of the two men murmurs, scratching his beard. “Don’t you?”
“Let’s start,” the other man suggests. He’s gray and gaunt, like a tree that’s been through a fire. “We don’t have much time.”
The woman stops drumming her fingers on the table, checks her watch and nods. “He’s right. Let’s start.”
The two men open their notepads and start to leaf through them
.
“How are the children?” asks the man with the beard
.
“They’re still growing,” she answers. “And soon we’ll have to choose.”
She has around twenty photographs with her. She shows them to her companions. The pictures are passed along swiftly from hand to hand
.
“How old are they?” the gaunt man asks
.
“Eight.”
The bearded man is clearly nervous. He anxiously springs up from the table, draws his face up to the window and looks outside, as if he could make out anything through the massive blizzard. “I heard them again. The wolves, I mean.”
The gaunt man croaks out a laugh. “We’re surrounded by thirty kilometers of ice. How could you be hearing wolves?”
The bearded man stands there at the window until the pane has completely fogged over. Then he goes back to his chair and checks his watch for the millionth time. “Maybe we should’ve met in a place that’s easier to reach. A park, like last time.”
“She wouldn’t have come anyway. You know what she’s like. In any case …” The gaunt man points at the photograph of a young girl. “Not her, we said.”
The woman runs her finger along the rim of her teacup, then raises an eyebrow without revealing any other sign of what she’s thinking
.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she says, sipping her tea
.
“I don’t think you can change your mind just like that.”
“This is my task.”
“But this girl …” A short, bony finger points at the face framed in dark, curly hair. “She’s still your niece.”
“She speaks two languages better than you do. What’s it going to take to convince you?”
“You know the risks.”
“And you know the reasons.”
“Last time we said no.”
“Last time she’d just been born.”
There’s a long moment of silence during which the only sounds are the kettle on the fire and the wind whooshing through the fireplace. The men stare grimly at the pictures on the table: Western faces, slanted eyes, blond hair, red hair, light skin, dark skin. Boys and girls all very different from each other, except for one fundamental detail. They’ll soon learn what it is
.
The shelter’s walls groan under the weight of the snow. Overhead, the stars slowly follow along their course in the gelid nighttime sky
.
“I wouldn’t want you to be making a mistake,” the gaunt man resumes
.
“You’ve never made any before?”
“I try not to. Especially because I don’t deal with nice people … You know that.”
The man with the beard clears his throat to make the others stop arguing. Then he says, “Let’s not be overconcerned right now. It’s still too early to decide. I just need to know where I’ll have to take the map.”
“Where did you hide it?”
The bearded man shows the others an old briefcase. “This should pass unnoticed. …”
“I hope so. Also because if anyone realized—”
The gaunt man suddenly stops talking
.
He hears something outside the shelter. Footsteps in the snow. Boots. The yelping of dogs. Furious howling
.
Wolves
.
The three spring to their feet
.
“Now do you believe me?” shouts the bearded man, rushing back toward the window
.
A moment before he manages to reach it, the door to the shelter is
flung open. The newcomer walks into the room, wearing boots complete with crampons. A thermal mask and a pair of gloves are thrown to the floor
.
“Sorry I’m late …,” the person says with a disarming smile. Long, thick black hair tumbles out of her hood. “But I had to find out where it’s going to begin.”
She removes the crampons from her boots with a snap
.
She closes the door, shutting out the sled drawn by wolves
.
And she says, “It’s going to begin in Rome.”
THE TRAP
P
ERFECTLY STILL IN THE DARKNESS, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD
E
LETTRA
waits.
Her legs crossed, her hands holding the string that will set off the trap, she’s sitting stock-still. As motionless as the old wardrobes lined up around her in a series of shadows, one darker than the next.
Elettra breathes slowly, silently. She ignores the dust, letting it settle on her.
Come out, come out …
, she thinks, only moving her lips.
Shrouded in the darkness, her fingers clutching the string, she listens. The boilers hum in the distance, pumping hot water through the pipes in the hotel rooms. The meters tick away softly, each one at its own pace. A dusty silence reigns over the basement.
The hotel, the city, the whole world seems incredibly far away.
It isn’t cold.
It’s the twenty-ninth of December.
It’s the beginning. But Elettra doesn’t know that yet.
* * *
A little noise tells her the mouse is approaching. Tick-tack.
The sound of tiny paws on the floor, coming from somewhere in the darkness.
Elettra slowly raises the string with a satisfied smile, thinking,
The irresistible appeal of pecorino Romano cheese
.
“No one can resist pecorino Romano,” her aunt Linda always says when she’s cooking.
Tick-tack. And then silence. Tick-tack. Then silence once again.
The mouse sniffs the air, warily following the aroma’s path.
He’s almost in my trap
, thinks Elettra, rubbing her thumb against the string. Then, in her mind, she asks,
How long is this going to take you, stupid mouse?
She’s built a simple trap: a piece of pecorino placed under a shoe box, which she’s suspended from an old umbrella shaft. A single tug will make it drop down on the mouse. The only difficult thing is figuring out, in the dark, when the mouse has reached the cheese.
She needs to follow her instinct. And instinct tells her it’s not time yet.
Elettra waits.
A little bit longer.
Tick-tack goes the mouse. And then silence.
Elettra loves moments like this. The very last moments of a perfect plan, when everything is about to end in triumph.
She can already imagine her father’s look of admiration when he gets back from his trip in the minibus. And her aunt Linda’s shrieks when Elettra shows her the mouse, stone-cold dead, held up by the tail, as is fitting for a stone-cold dead mouse.
Her other aunt, Irene, would simply say, “You shouldn’t go down to play in the basement. It’s a very dangerous maze down
there.” And then she’d add, with a flash of cunning, “No one knows where that maze leads.”